The Taliban movement (a terrorist group banned in the Russian Federation) is increasingly present in social networks and on the Internet. There the Taliban are trying to form a more positive image of the movement than the one that has developed now among the world community. Many social networks block such accounts, but due to the ambiguity of the existing rules on this account, not everyone does this.
PR in Taliban style
American experts decided to study how it happened that the Taliban, who condemned modern technology and banned the use of the Internet, changed their tactics and used social networks. Currently, supporters of the Taliban (a terrorist group banned in the Russian Federation) have accounts on various social networks – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – as well as numerous chats in messengers such as WhatsApp and Telegram. In an interview with The Washington Post, Emerson Brooking, a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory, said that the Taliban have been on Twitter since at least 2011, on Telegram since 2016, and since 2019, representatives of the movement have been actively using hashtags. in social networks to distribute their posts. “U “Taliban” There has been a social media strategy for years, with the Taliban using multiple platforms to spread their messages.
They react quickly to events – even faster than the Afghan government, ”said Tom Jocelyn, senior fellow at the US Democracy Defense Fund.
The Taliban are so adept at using social media that analysts say the conclusion is that in some cases they are clearly being consulted by PR companies. Experts note that the promotion of topics, their adaptation to the style of different sites, the creation of potentially viral videos and images are carried out according to the same patterns as many corporate PR campaigns. One such example, American experts consider a video in which armed Taliban in camouflage pose against a pink-blue sky, and the accompanying inscription in English and Pashto reads: “In an atmosphere of freedom.”
American experts are confident that the Taliban have specialists dedicated to promoting their ideology and creating a positive image of the movement on social networks. “Based on a lot of data, several accounts are run by people whose main job is likely to be social media,” says Darren Linville, a researcher at the Clemson University Center for Media Forensics. “Taliban”, but people who have continuous access to the Internet, both from a computer and from a portable device, and who know English decently. “
With Twitter at the ready
According to experts, although the number of smartphones in Afghanistan itself has grown significantly in recent years, and the mobile Internet has become quite widespread, such posts and videos are primarily aimed at an international audience – like Afghans living in other countries, or potential supporters of the Taliban »There, and on people who have a negative attitude towards the movement. So, the official website of the movement has versions in many languages - Pashto, Dari, Urdu, Arabic and English. “They have adapted very well to the Western ear and know how to play with journalists, they know what to say to make it sound attractive to the Western ear, and they know how to deceive,” says Mr. Jocelyn.
On social media, the Taliban are trying to fight with the negative image of their movement in the Western public consciousness. In recent months, observers have noted a surge of this kind of content in various social networks and instant messengers. During the terrorist offensive, they constantly broadcast information about this offensive, along with posts about the good life that awaits citizens under Taliban rule in the future.
Taliban spokesman Suhail Shahin has a Twitter account with over 350,000 followers. In recent days, there have been many tweets proclaiming the peacefulness of the Taliban. Suhail Shahin wrote that the Mujahideen are forbidden to enter other people’s houses without permission, that the Taliban are not going to encroach on the “life, property and honor” of Afghans, that women under the Taliban will be able to continue their studies and work. Other accounts associated with the Taliban regularly report that normal life continues in the country in general and in Kabul in particular since the arrival of the Taliban.
But there are also services designed for the local population – for example, the WhatsApp account of the “support service” launched after coming to power, in which you can report cases of violence, robbery, attacks, and so on. According to The Economist’s correspondent Daniel Knowles, who worked in Afghanistan, there were such accounts before. “When I first heard about it, they were not “support services”… It was rather like that – the local Taliban could be contacted on WhatsApp, and if you call, they can resolve conflicts and disputes, ”he says.
Hitree Trump
The Taliban’s skillful use of social media makes it more difficult for tech companies to fight them. Some conservative observers have already wondered why the social networks that blocked the accounts of then US President Donald Trump are not so actively blocking accounts associated with the Taliban. The fact is that the Taliban almost never directly violate the rules and regulations adopted in these messengers and social networks. “Modern “Taliban” He is well versed in technology and social media – nothing like what the group was 20 years ago, says Rita Katz, managing director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors extremist content on the Internet.
– It’s obvious that “Taliban” complicates the task of social media in terms of their content policy and does not cross the clear lines separating the violation of such policies that Trump has crossed. “
At the same time, in her opinion, such content should be removed, as it “feeds the newly inspired and extremely dangerous global Islamist militant movement.”
Social networks are already taking action to combat the Taliban. On Tuesday, Facebook announced the blocking of accounts praising, supporting or representing the Taliban on company platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram. “In accordance with American law “Taliban” is under sanctions as a terrorist organization, and we have blocked it from our services in accordance with our policy on dangerous organizations, ”said Facebook.
The company also noted that a team of experts on Afghanistan who speak Pashto and Dari and understand local realities are engaged in tracking. Later it became known that WhatsApp had blocked all accounts known to him associated with the Taliban terrorist movement, including the account of the “population support service”.
YouTube also recently confirmed that it will continue to delete accounts “allegedly associated with Afghan “The Taliban”owned and controlled by the movement. ” At the same time, a number of social networks and instant messengers, including Twitter, have not yet blocked such accounts. In addition to the absence of direct violations of the platform’s rules, the point is that if the Pakistani Taliban is declared a foreign terrorist organization in the United States, the Afghan branch of the movement, although it is on the sanctions lists, does not have such an official designation.
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